


The Good Redguard

by Cramp



Category: Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 22:24:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3504959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cramp/pseuds/Cramp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal the Orc is the mistaken recipient of a rare good deed. So he decides to pass it forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Redguard

The heat radiated. With his eyes closed he might well have been trapped in an oversized oven - the stone blocks at his back, the cobbles of the square, even the bustling bodies that passed him by. They all sweltered, warming him to his very bones, cored with forge-hot iron. He had his back against the rough stone of the fountain, towered over by some hero of High Rock’s history, a fat scroll in one hand and a key in the other, and wearing an expression of beatific comprehension. They dotted the city with absurd regularity, Mal had no idea there could be be so many wise persons worthy of sculpting in the whole world, let alone a single city.

He rolled his shoulders, scraping his skin on the stone behind through the thin linen of his undershirt, all that he needed in the invasive heat. Granite, he suspected, roughly hewn into crude blocks. Not typical of Breton construction in his experience, but perhaps the fountain was older than the rest?

Orcs are the finest smiths in Tamriel, this is not a controversial claim. They could feel the rhythms of the metal, the weave and weft of it, shaping with a guiding hand and respect. Forcing but never fighting it. But for all that, their monuments tended to be constructed from stone, chipped from heavy monoliths. A great waste of talent.

As he sat there in the market square, awaiting the arrival of his contact, Mal considered changing that, his own contribution to orsimer culture. He had seen the brassy faces of the dwemer, forever watching their tomb-like halls, and the egotistical bronze sculptures of mannish nobles. It would be proper that orcs, born of the forge, should have their own tradition.

His heavy brow creased as a shape formed in his mind’s eye. Something huge and towering, metal as dark as his own skin - not gleaming, but raw and rough with working. His talents ran more to the etching of metal but he was sure he could turn his touch to sculpture. A depiction of orcish greatness. Malacath of course, imposing. Isolated.

Mal’s head cocked to the side. He was suddenly reminded of a friend from his youth. Sulkag. Boyish good looks, an easy smile and long smooth limbs - so unlike the sullen and hulking Mal. Ha had moved so gracefully, made artistry of everything he did. Perhaps… perhaps a different kind of Malacath - a new aspect of the pariah god. Mal lifted his hand, imagining shaping the supple body, the narrow hips and athletic buttocks.

Nearby a voice spoke.

‘I’m sorry friend. I don’t have much but you’re welcome to share…’

Though to Mal, who had long ago scraped up an understanding for the unfamiliar tones of Breton, but slipped out it regularly during his long silences, the words were just a jabber of noise. Something was pressed into his upraised palm and he finally opened up his eyes.

The glare blinded him and he jerked his head back, knocking it against hard stone and shooting fireworks into his vision. He got the sense of a formidable brush of hair before he had to squeeze his eyes close and blink away the tears.

When they cleared, he looked at what had been thrust into his hand. A heel of bread, roughly torn from a loaf, the crust almost as hard as the stone behind him. His face cracked into a wide grin, chest jerking with a chuckle as he turned the bread over in his hands. Did he really look the part? He scraped his fingertips across his square jaw and over his scalp. There was a rough bristle on both, a few days growth of his wiry hair. That, with the thin, sweat stained shift and lack of shoes, he supposed that it was not unfair to say he looked the beggar.

But he was not. He was gainfully employed and his stomach was still digesting a filling if boring breakfast. The Code of Malacath, unwritten though it was, was clear on the independence an adherent was meant to display. It would not do for him to accept this charity meant for someone who could really use it. It edged on fraudulent and Mal could not let that lie.

He pushed himself to his feet, causing a haggling Breton to squeak and almost tumble over, shocked by his menacing heft. He set off at a half-jog, creating a path by his sheer size, shoppers and merchants making way. They all had the same look, eyes widening, lips pursing, like he was the vanguard of an invading army. Mal ignored them, narrow eyes searching for… There!

A bush of hair bobbed through the crowd, a fountain of brown curls. Mal accelerated, drawing a few gasps. The way parted and he saw his quarry clearly. She wore high white robes, stained by hard use to a sandstone yellow and cinched tight to her narrow waist and flaring wide at her elbows. A Redguard, Mal judged from the colour of her wrists, a soft brown that looked at home in the unforgiving sunlight. He called out, but it was another lost voice in an orchestra of shouts and yells and barked conversations.

He reached out for her shoulder, clapping down as gently as he knew how, a soft touch that would turn into a squeeze, his other hand holding up the bread to display it to her. But she span in place, the thick thunderhead of hair fwapping across his face. Her eyes were wide with an uncertain alarm and her hand chopped across to smack his extended wrist. It did little to move him, but it was enough to knock the bread from his grip.

‘Do not touch me!’ she spat and he snatched his hand from her shoulder, pulling back and shrinking, hunching. Then she recognised him and her gaze relaxed, though she kept himself held defensively, pulled away and establishing a space around herself with the flapping of her robes.

‘Oh, it’s you.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I’m sorry, but I have little enough coin to spare on myself, let alone you.’

Mal shook his head, his cheeks burning with a grey-green heat. He waved his hands in front of his chest, wrists loosely. His brain threw up a dozen different words, all of them orcish. Too long without speaking again. Finally he dug up the right speech and his mouth opened, his throat gravelly with disuse.

‘No.’ He grunted. ‘I mean. I’m not a beggar.’ He patted at his side, searching for his coin purse to display. It was only after he had been staring and patting for some heartbeats that he recalled it was stored with the rest of his gear in the bunkhouse.

The Redguard had a curious but still cautious expression and he realised he would need to do more. He kneeled and retrieved the bread, which had taken some of a beating from its fall, dry dirt dusting it.

‘I mean. I can’t accept this. Don’t need it. Sorry.’ He offered the bread back to her and they both looked it over, cracked by Mal’s crushing grip as he had chased and streaked with dust. No longer so tempting.

There was a long pause of silence and then the Redguard carefully plucked the hunk of bread from his hand, carefully not to brush against his palm or fingers. When he looked to her face, her colour was up and he feared she would snap at him again. But she clutched the bread to her chest and her eyebrows shot up her brow.

‘I’m so sorry! I just saw you there… and you looked so… I thought you must be hungry… and no one was even looking at you.’ She swallowed and mastered herself, straightening up and nodding her head.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said formally.

Mal shook his head again. He had exhausted the pleasantries he currently had access to and anyway, over the woman’s shoulder he could see two guardsmen taking far too much interest in their exchange. He patted the air.

‘It’s fine. Fine.’

He waved and pulled away, sure that he had done little but embarrass the woman and himself both. His last look over his shoulder had her thoughtfully dusting the bread off and taking a small nibble.

At the fountain his contact was waiting - sighing heavily and complaining about being made to wait.

*

He saw the Redguard again later that same day.

It was dusk and the sun was lowering behind the heights of the buildings, cutting down alleyways and streaked with the bloody colour of the death of the day. Mal was armed and armoured now, his enormous mace slung across his back and his body encased in dull orichalcum plates. He and two others, neither of them familiar to him, were waiting for a Breton merchant who wanted guarding on one of the more treacherous mountainous trading routes.

As with all mercantile plans there were delays  - backers to plead, drivers to berate, missing wares and last minute changes. In short, Mal had spent the last hour waiting. Fortunately he was most practiced at this, and he used the time to examine the curved surface of his bracers. Some years ago he had etched matching designs on both, a grimacing orc face bisected on one with a ornate mace, and the other by a sword blade. Looking at them now he felt the work was immature and should have been made more representative than realistic - using the curve of the metal rather than working against it.

He was sitting at the exit of a narrow street, which opened up into a wide thoroughfare that  led to the Judge’s Gate and the East Way. A noise caught his attention and he spotted a guard leaning over a rag wearing beggar. The guard was slapping the butt of his spear into the beggar’s side and his face was red with shouting. The words were unclear and Mal didn’t want to hear them anyway.

His guts twisted with discomfort and he stood, trying to stretch them out into their proper shape. But what he could do? He was an orc in a Breton city - at best they would run him out of town if he raised his hand to a guard. At worst they might lock him up. His hands itched.

‘Hey!’

His neck jerked to the side. A woman stormed up the road, her robes flapping like wings behind her arms. If anything her hair was fuller now, pushed back off her high brow by a red sash. The guard ignored her, still berating the beggar, bent low enough that the spit from his shouting splattered on the dirty face below. Mal took a step forward from the side-street.

The woman, the Redguard, stood behind the guardsman, her hands planted on her hips, her mouth open and panting, like she had run up some stairs. But he took no notice of her, suddenly backhanding the beggar across the face.

It was too much. The Redguard gasped and her brow furrowed in determination. She lifted her foot and set it against the guard’s backside, shoving him over and into the packed dirt of the courtyard. Mal inhaled.

The guard could not believe, rolling around like a beetle onto his back and looking up at the woman wide-eyed. There were no words in his vocabulary to express the rage. But the Redguard was more concerned for the beggar, kneeling beside him and cradling him up to sitting. Mal could sense the violence brewing. To trigger a man like that, resistance where none was expected - they either were thrown off track by it and quieted, or enraged beyond all reason.

The guard was pushing himself to his feet, not speaking now, but Mal could see this was only because he had no more use for words. The grip on his spear was white knuckled and Mal knew he was too far away to stop a thrust.

But he was unnecessary. The Redguard simply looked up from her prone position, an extreme, withering disappointment on her face, and opened both her fists. A bright white burst. Even from the distance and not being the target, Mal reeled back, blinking away the painful stars. The guardsman got it full to the face, yelling incoherently and clutching his eyes, staggering away. The Redguard began to try and pull the beggar up to his feet, but for his sins, he was heavy or she was weak.

And yelling came from behind him. A pair of guards, seen the magic against the comrade and feisty with enthusiastic anger. They pounded up the street, waving their spears and commanding the Redguard to stay put. She looked up, as startled as a doe and even from where Mal was standing he could see her hands shake. An impulsive creature then.

But at times, so was he.

He moved, planting himself across the entrance of the street, filling it near entirely and setting himself in place. He did not look over his shoulder, not even flinch when the guards shouted for him to move. He looked at the Redguard and smiled and hoped that she recognised him. She had done him a small kindness, and though it had been unnecessary for him, he liked the mind that thought as hers had.

His was equally a small thing and he rocked as the guards tried to shove past him, feigning a mute deafness at their increasingly hostile cries. Then their spears were smacking against his back and shoulders, ringing off his armour. He pretended they were gnats, even when one caught him square across the back of his head.

The lady was almost to her feet, the beggar hanging off her shoulder. She was not looking at him, did not wave or send a smile, just shatter into five shimmering simulacrums of herself, each hobbling off in a different direction, scattering.

Mal finally let himself be pushed to his knees, the guardsman sweeping past him, one clipping him across the jaw with the butt of her spear. But it did not remove the grin from his face. He would be gone from the city by the time the sun hit the horizon and a few more bruises would not ruin his looks any further.

He felt something wriggle in his chest. A good thing. It was not an uncomfortable feeling. It was like spending time with a lover, warm and radiant and it pushed away the edges of the aches.

One of his companions spoilt it by giving him a playful kick in the ribs. The merchant’s train had arrived.

 

 


End file.
